This past weekend proved to be a refreshing for Iowa gymnastics.
Three Hawkeyes from the men’s team — Bennet Huang, Dylan Ellsworth, and Nick Merryman — competed in the Winter Cup Challenge preliminaries on Feb. 15, in which Huang and Ellsworth advanced on to finals. Merryman was named a second reserve.
Huang competed in the junior session, notching first in the all-around and pulling five top-ten finishes over the course of the six events. Hawkeye signee Evan Davis finished eighth in the all-around in this session and also moved on to finals.
In the senior preliminaries, Ellsworth and Merryman both finished in the top 20 in the all-arounds. Between the two, the Hawkeyes notched numerous top 15 scores in five of the six events, Ellsworth placing eighth on the vault.
Ellsworth and Huang competed in finals on Feb. 17, both placing in the top 20 ranked by combined scores between preliminaries and finals. Ellsworth finished 17th thanks to three top-20 finishes. Huang placed second after notching five top-five scores, and all of his scores were in the top 10.
On the home front, another fiery entrance, this time in clouds of pink, greeted the GymHawks. The Iowa women’s gymnastics team came out with the promised vengeance with a victory over Ball State, 195.775-194.825. The Hawkeyes outscored the Cardinals in every event and claimed every event individual title. Junior Nicole Chow took the title n the all-around competition.
“I think we focused on the right things,” Chow said. “Our word of the week was intensity, so I think we really tried to bring that out today on the competition floor.”
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The Cardinals, while scoring lower than the Hawkeyes, didn’t suffer any falls during the meet. Iowa, on the other hand, had two but counted neither. The second proved to be more damaging than just a score, which stings despite the victory.
The first event for the Hawkeyes, the vault, was fall-free. The GymHawks stuck their landings and recorded a team score of 49.000. The next event, the uneven bars, was also a strong event for the GymHawks, despite one fall. Regardless, the Hawkeyes handily completed the rest of routines for this event and pulled a score of 48.925.
The third event, the beam, was the thorn. Junior Rose Piorkowski, in women’s gymnastics head coach Larissa Libby’s words, a team leader, started off the event with her strong routine but ended with a very hard fall, one she was unable to get up from on her own. She did not complete the event and did not compete for the rest of the meet.
“We have the saying where it’s, ‘I have your back,’ ” said junior Sydney Hogan. “In that moment, especially, I think we showed that we have each other’s backs. I had to show that I had Rose’s back after that.”
The GymHawks did have Piorkowski’s back, pulling the high scores they needed and scoring a 48.800 by the completion of the event. To finish the meet, the GymHawks hit the floor — and nailed it. The last gymnast to perform, senior Lanie Snyder, scored a stunning 9.900, the crowning jewel to the victory over the Cardinals.
“We had an injury, so I’m still trying to process,” said Libby following the meet. “With the competition, I was very pleased with the girls. We trained super hard all week to fix some of the details we’re making mistakes on. I thought we looked far more impressive as an overall team.”